Alternative Ability Sets?

[Nereidalbel]

If I want to have a character who changes ALL of his abilities to a new set, including his ER, should I buy each set under on parent item and apply Alternative Ability to the entire thing, or is there a better way to do it?

[Jerander]

Sounds like Alternate Form, to me.

[Nereidalbel]

That seems a bit odd for somebody who changes power sets, but does nothing to their appearance.

[Jerander]

Alternate Form has little to do with changing appearance and more to do with changing advantages, disadvantage, features, quirks, etc. Ability sets are usually composed of those. Appearance changes, unless tied to an advantage/disadvantage, is merely "fluff".

[Nereidalbel]

I was going to try to keep it to one character sheet, but I guess just buying some Alternate Forms would be cheaper than entire ability sets...

[PK]

Alternate Form does not require an appearance change. It may seem weird to use a Shapeshifting advantage for what is essentially a mental/spiritual change, but the mechanics of said trait work perfectly for it.

[munin]

Although AF may not require an appearance change, I think it's priced based on that assumption -- 15 points to be able to change your appearance with no other trait changes.

My understanding of the reason that you pay only 90% of the difference in template costs is that those extra traits have an implied "Accessibility, Only in alternate form, -10%" limitation. If you're not actually changing your form, you can simply apply that limitation directly based on some other switchable trait (a HUD perk can be a good choice).

But buying one set of abilities at full price and the other sets at 1/5 cost seems more restrictive than the house rule (#15) used recently for Simultaneous Spells (Pyramid #3/63, p. 5) of buying multiple alternative abilities at full price in order to use more than one at a time. You may not have bought the N most-expensive abilities, but you bought the most expensive set, and are then restricted to only using certain sets of abilities rather than being able to choose freely among the abilities. Seems fair.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by munin

Although AF may not require an appearance change, I think it's priced based on that assumption -- 15 points to be able to change your appearance with no other trait changes.

Rather, "15 points to be able to change your racial template to another racial template of the same or lesser cost." AF (Dog) costs the same as AF (Human) if the Dog template comes out to [0] or less given that the Human template is arbitrarily priced at [0].

[Nereidalbel]

Going with Alternate Form, what would be a proper limitation value if I could only swap power sets if I can draw from the source for a given set? Drawing in smoke, draining a neon sign, etc?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Going with Alternate Form, what would be a proper limitation value if I could only swap power sets if I can draw from the source for a given set? Drawing in smoke, draining a neon sign, etc?

Do you mean source as Powers defines it? The kind of requirements you mention sound like Environmental.